A technique in which an event sensed by a plurality of sensors mounted in a terminal, such as a smart phone or a tablet, is evaluated based on a rule described by a logic tree of a combination of OR operation and AND operation, and the circumstances in which the terminal is used is known.
The circumstances in which the terminal is used is also referred to as context. A service is proposed in which a server delivers an application in accordance with a context determined by a terminal to the terminal, and the terminal uses the delivered application on the spot. As related art, for example, Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2006-344017, Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 9-231184, and so on are disclosed.
Dividing a logic tree given to a terminal into partial logic trees and causing another terminal to evaluate a rule described by the partial logic trees makes it possible for a terminal to distribute the load of processing used in determining the context.
However, there are some cases where a rule described by divided partial logic trees is not able to be evaluated by another terminal. For example, when a terminal does not have information on the type of a sensor mounted in another terminal, a terminal is sometimes not able to divide partial logic trees that may be evaluated by using an event sensed in the other terminal. It is desirable that the load of processing for determining context is distributed and thus the load of determination processing in an information processing apparatus is able to be reduced.